Ti West
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Connections, in both directions
With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
He also evokes other major horrors — especially Psycho and Hooper’s Chain Saw follow-up, Death Trap , aka Eaten Alive — to build background dread while the main characters think they’re in a comical, down-home Boogie Nights .
We see several of the porn scenes being shot, and like the ones in “Boogie Nights” they’re realistic and true to the scruffy pre-video porn vibe.
The introduction of the eerie farm environment is lifted straight from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” while the porn actors aspiring to be famous have the spirit of “Boogie Nights.”
While Mia Goth plays double duty as both Maxine and Howard’s wife Pearl, Brittany Snow’s performance wholly embraces this nostalgic take on what a porn actress from the late 1970s should feel like, reminiscent of Heather Graham in Boogie Nights.
Snow and Mescudi bring a heart and humor to these scenes that evoke Boogie Nights .
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
While X points most overtly to the slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – along with sly references to everything from The Shining to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore – what West offers up is more winking tribute than carbon copy.
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the most obvious touchstone here, but there are references throughout to films like “Psycho” and “The Shining.”
With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
There’s a fine line between a compelling homage and a tedious exercise in stylistic replication, and West achieves the former, even as he nods to Psycho (1960) and The Shining (1980).
With homages to the stair scene in Tobe Hopper’s 1974 classic and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Rockett’s lens honors horror past with his palette.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
influenced X (2022), MaXXXine (2024)
Themes Plot
The first entry was a take on Tobe Hooper’s late ‘70s output (particularly “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and “Eaten Alive!”) that found a clever approach by creating unexpected antagonists with palpable motivations.
Here he goes solo to pay homage to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” – the 1974 original, not the slack update available now on Netflix.
Ti West has done something unique here – although the plot is similar to the entertainingly original and fun 2011 feature BreadCrumbs – yet the inspiration from classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is abundantly clear.
West also clearly has a fondness for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , Tobe Hooper's revolutionary 1974 landmark, a film that X , set only five years later, explicitly echoes to an uncanny degree — and also revises.
“X” has a few nods to 1970s horror classics, such as 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and 1978’s “Halloween.”
West percolates these ideas under the surface of his latest and, thus far, greatest film, an inspired blend of Boogie Nights (1997) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) that feels designed to trap its audience.
A gondola that leads up to a Hollywood Hills mansion is a direct reference to Brian De Palma's Body Double, while the sex-worker-kidnapping psycho nods to Paul Schrader's Hardcore and the lesser-known 1983 B-movie Angel.
…the references are enormous fun: we get Psycho’s Bates Motel as an unlikely refuge, Kevin Bacon as a scummy private eye with a Chinatown nose plaster, and lashings of Brian De Palma’s Body Double and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. West clearly adores these films, and in an ideal world, MaXXXine would have joined them in the canon.
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
While X points most overtly to the slasher classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – along with sly references to everything from The Shining to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore – what West offers up is more winking tribute than carbon copy.
Thanks to the resurgence of “Scream” and “Halloween,” not to mention originals “Happy Death Day,” “Fear Street” and “Freaky,” the slasher genre has enjoyed a grand revival, but “X” feels like the apex mountain for this new era of young people getting their bodies mutilated in grotesque, often, brutal methods.
This teamed with the darkly humorous moments puts it in a similar vein to popular franchise Scream , with X shaping up to be another fun entry into the genre.
A much better “Texas Chainsaw” tribute than that wretched thing on Netflix last month and way smarter about slasher movies than the recent “Scream” sequel, writer-director Ti West’s X is a deliciously grisly entertainment existing on a level of craft well above most multiplex offerings, genre or otherwise.
Early successes for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th inspired a barrage of films over the ’80s and early ’90s, including The Prowler, April Fool’s Day, and Sleepaway Camp, that ultimately culminated with the reimagining of the genre with 1996’s Scream.
She displayed it earlier this year in, haha, the new “Scream,” but I far prefer this flavor of post-modern horror, which makes its references and bonds with its audience in images and moments rather than sub-Williamson dialogue.
When not acting himself, Ti West writes and directs his own work — notably the 2011 film The Innkeepers — as well as television episodes of “Scream” for MTV and “The Exorcist” for Fox.
Now, after nine years away from the genre, he dives back in with “X” a gory tribute to Austin filmmaker Tobe Hooper and while “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” is the first thing that comes to mind, it seems that West was inspired by Hooper’s follow-up 1976’s “Eaten Alive.”
He also evokes other major horrors — especially Psycho and Hooper’s Chain Saw follow-up, Death Trap , aka Eaten Alive — to build background dread while the main characters think they’re in a comical, down-home Boogie Nights .
Returning to feature length filmmaking for the first time since 2013’s The Sacrament, West delivers his best Tobe Hooper impression with this loving pastiche of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Eaten Alive.
A deep-fried scummy Texas tale that summons up all of the grimy goopy 70s Tobe Hooper feels—most obvious (times twenty) it’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , but there’s also a good dose of Hooper’s ribald alligator epic Eaten Alive here for good measure—the first thing we hear is the buzzing of flies, and the next thing we see are the reddest, wettest guts splattered across the highway.
And to show this, with his tongue very firmly in cheek, West depicts Maxine on a tour of the Universal lot, outside the Bates Motel, imagining that she’s seeing the ghost of Pearl in the windows of the looming house above, where another cinematic killing spree took place. If directly invoking Psycho will further embolden the horror auteurists who have begun to view West as a hack who adds nothing to his myriad influences, then directly drawing narrative parallels between it and X––which should be uncontroversial on paper, considering the well-trod slasher template Hitchcock forged––will turn them apoplectic.
A chase sequence across the Universal Studios backlot ends on the old set of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
A chase scene brings Maxine right into the home of Psycho's Norman Bates on the Universal lot.
Maxine doesn’t seem to mind though, figuring she’s already dealt with a psychotic killer once before, so what’s another to her? When she tells Tabby she can “handle herself” walking home, Tabby ripostes, “Said every dead girl in Hollywood.”
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
There’s a fine line between a compelling homage and a tedious exercise in stylistic replication, and West achieves the former, even as he nods to Psycho (1960) and The Shining (1980).
With echoes of everything from “The Shining” to “Psycho” to “Boogie Nights” to “Alligator” to “Hardcore” to infamous porn films such as “Andy Warhol’s Blue Movie” and “Debbie Does Dallas,” this is an homage but also a strikingly original and cheerfully grotesque work, filled with dark humor, relatively complex subtext and gung-ho, all-in performances from the talented ensemble cast.
Her partner, the much older and sleazy smooth-talker Wayne (Martin Henderson), convinces her to star in a pornographic film titled The Farmer’s Daughter ; the success of which needs to make half as much as Debbie Does Dallas (1978) to quash their financial woes.
RJ views the film as “art” while Wayne views it as a cash cow ala Debbie Does Dallas.
He’s our 40-something patriarch who sees the outsider success of recent pornos like Debbie Does Dallas as a way to escape the doldrums of everyday life.
And also a brief course in film history, with particular attention to “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and shout-outs to “Psycho” and “Debbie Does Dallas.”
It joins the league of Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen as one of the most diabolical entries in the modern horror library .
Imagine John Carpenter hired to make a drive-in knock-off of Rosemary’s Baby.
West matures considerably with what is basically a slow boil homage to the seventies that is obviously inspired by the classic “Rosemary’s Baby.”
Better than the film’s nuanced references to its forebears (the opening nods to Rosemary’s Baby with a track into Mary’s back positioned only partly inside a door frame), is its capricious script.
As the tale unfolds, a debt to not only '80s horror films, but also Rosemary's Baby, The Amityville Horror , and Hammer's gothic '70s classics also emerges: food (specifically, pizza) is a source of fetid disgust; murderous mysteries are discovered in the remote mansion's nooks and crannies; and Satanism is revealed as a malevolent force with which Samantha must ultimately reckon.
A gondola that leads up to a Hollywood Hills mansion is a direct reference to Brian De Palma's Body Double, while the sex-worker-kidnapping psycho nods to Paul Schrader's Hardcore and the lesser-known 1983 B-movie Angel.
With moralistic fringe mobs protesting Hollywood as a “Satanic factory” and a pornstar-turned-actress finding her identity amidst serial murders, it’s easy to feel the shadow of classics like Brian DePalma’s Body Double or Paul Schrader’s Hardcore.
Nods to sophisticated, sexy thrillers like Body Double (1984) or Dressed to Kill (1980) celebrate the Americana craze over amateur investigations, where protagonists spiral deeper and deeper into a conspiracy as if pulled in by an irresistible undertow.
In Maxxxine, the series moves away from the made-in-New Zealand Texas farmhouse with adjacent alligator lake of the first two pictures into a 1980s Hollywood which is at once scuzzy and vibrant. With perfect needle drops — Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’, Kim Carnes’ ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ — and an array of authentic costumes and hairdos, this inhabits video-rental space with Abel Ferrara’s Fear City, Brian De Palma’s Body Double, William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A. — not to mention a whole lot of non-auteurist exploitation pictures like the teenage-hooker classic Angel trilogy, the cult-of-killers cop flick Cobra and the extraordinary mad-movie-buff film Fade To Black.
X (2022) is an homage to the early days of the modern slasher – Last House on the Left (1972), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and even Sleepaway Camp (1983), but with one crucial difference.
Early successes for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th inspired a barrage of films over the ’80s and early ’90s, including The Prowler, April Fool’s Day, and Sleepaway Camp, that ultimately culminated with the reimagining of the genre with 1996’s Scream.
A love letter to “Friday the 13th,” “Sleepaway Camp,” and obviously “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but also the adult film industry, “X” has assembled an incredible ensemble ranging from the versatile Mia Goth to 2022’s glorfield MVP and newly anointed scream queen Jenna Ortega (she had a couple showdowns with our pal Ghostface earlier this year in the excellent “Scream” revival) to help keep the story gelling.
Anachronisms be damned, the film is set in 1985, but West takes inspiration from all across the 20th century, be it its Chinatown-styled private eye character, a Goodfellas-esque one-er in the first act, or the eponymous protagonist wearing makeup straight out of Blade Runner during a club scene.
In one sequence, in particular, Bacon resembles Jack Nicholson in Chinatown as he pursues Maxine on the Universal backlot; and the Hollywood homicide detectives played by a fun if underused pairing of Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale might as well be out of any ‘80s cop movie—complete with MaXXXine's third act detour into action movie spectacle.
Kevin Bacon also joins the ensemble as a cheeky detective with a plastered nose, like Chinatown’s Jack Nicholson.
But this time West's influences lean into the film-noir classics set in L.A., like Roman Polanski's iconic 1974 hit, Chinatown.
West wears his influences on his sleeve, deliberately invoking the visual language of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (especially during the early, on-the-road scenes in their van), as well as the long zooms and creepy score that recall “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.”
In the same way that Let’s Scare Jessica To Death embraces a melancholy end of the 1960s, X feels like Ti West looking back on the 1970s with similar sadness as he reflects back on the exploitation, horror, and pornographic films of the era.
Its refreshing lack of prudishness and its wholesale rejection of final girl tropes seem to frame it as a response to our current trend of constant artistic re-litigation of FUCKING EVERYTHING, wrapped in the clothes of Just Before Dawn or Let’s Scare Jessica to Death .
“X” is threaded with blithe references to key films — a car in a swamp like the one in “Psycho,” an ax through a door like the one that kicks off Jack Nicholson’s rampage in “The Shining,” an alligator borrowed from “Alligator” (ingeniously shot from high above in one jittery sequence), an ending that nods to the premise of Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore” (which came out in 1979).
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
In addition to its many cultural signifiers (New Coke! John Parr’s theme song from “St. Elmo’s Fire”! Cocaine!), “MaXXXine” also homages many different directors and films of the period—the most glaringly obvious to me being Vernon Zimmerman’s “Fade to Black” (1980), Lucio Fulci’s “The New York Ripper” (1982), Gary Sherman’s “Vice Squad” (1982), Robert Vincent O’Neil’s “Angel” (1983), and Brian De Palma’s “Body Double” (1984).
Those gloves are likely an homage to Dario Argento’s “Deep Red,” along with numerous other references scattered throughout the film.
One watch of Argento's Deep Red (1975) will reveal just how much the giallo genre is a blueprint for West and Goth's horror tribute, with plot twists, striking colors, and a nonstop series of suspense.
Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
influenced The House of the Devil (2009), X (2022), MaXXXine (2024)
Themes Visuals
Set roughly six years after the darkly funny yet also sharp X (these movies once had characters with depth), Maxine Minx is in Los Angeles, now making the leap from porn to horror, prepared to one day be a star just like Halloween did for a young and talented Jamie Lee Curtis.
“X” has a few nods to 1970s horror classics, such as 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” and 1978’s “Halloween.”
Well, writer/director Ti West sets and primes his new slasher film between two classics of the genre, 1978’s “Halloween” and 1980’s “Friday the 13th”.
This is art house horror, heavily influenced by the scary movies made before "Halloween" changed the genre.
Yearn with learned fervor for the golden days of “Halloween“ when sexy gals were slaughtered with more elan?
Set in the 1980s and shot with a sensibility that mirrors the films that followed the lead of John Carpenter’s ground-breaking “Halloween,” “House of the Devil” is all about the simple task of creating tension – then releasing it in a catharsis of shrieking horror.
The opening credits dazzle with the nostalgia they elicit, freeze frames, camera zooms and the introduction of a gnarly synthesizer score by Jeff Grace almost as inspired as John Carpenter's in 1980's " The Fog " all put to striking use.